On The Island IWO JIMA
This legend is about my father, Al Beda, from Youngstown Ohio.
In 1943, my father receives his draft notice at eighteen. After basic training he joins the Air Corp and is assigned to the Pacific. He arrives at Iwo Jima a week after the American Marines secured the beach at a bloody cost. Al’s responsibility was to work on the airstrip and repair the damaged, shot-up bombers as they returned from their bombing raids over mainland Japan.
Iwo Jima was a very dangerous place to be. Al survives a Japanese banzai attack, several air raids, sniper attacks and witnessed surrender.
My father has a camera with him, and ventures to climb Mount Suribachi to make his own mark in history. He snaps a few photographs from the identical location where the famed U.S. Marines raised the flag a few weeks earlier. I have these never-before-seen photographs in my possession.
By August of 1945, a mysterious B-29 Superfortress bomber lands under heavy guard. Al notices unusual bomber doors. By the following morning, the Atomic bomb was dropped. He finds out later that the mystery plane sitting on the runway was called the “Boxcar,” a back up plane for the ”Enola Gay” which had dropped the Atomic Bomb the day earlier